Triangle Treatments
July 10, 2014
Inspirational Art
Triangles, like any other flat form, can be treated like a simple canvas to be filled with all sorts of potential colors, textures, accents, lines and shapes. The thing about triangles though is that you are working with what is visually an arrow so you have this added dynamic characteristic to play with that is not seen in any other shape.
Here, Jana Lehmann demonstrates a variety of treatments on her triangles with no seeming rhyme or reason. However, it works and beautifully so. For all the variety in the color and treatment, all the triangles are the same shape and point in the same downward direction. Plus, they are all working in harmony with the contrast of floating circles against the rigid sides of their triangular boundaries. The disparity in application along with the pointing triangles and floating circles, especially the one that got out and is now dangling off the point of a triangle, make it a really dynamic piece. And we can’t ignore the consistently perfect application and clean finish of every element that is the hallmark of Jana’s work and a source of awe for so many of us. That kind of craftsmanship brings out the intense beauty of what could have been an overly chaotic design without it.
Jana may be the most exploratory polymer artist when it comes to shapes. Just take a quick look at her Flickr page to see just how she pushes and bends the idea of a triangle as well as squares, circles, and every other shape it would seem.
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Triangulating Books
July 9, 2014
Inspirational Art
Here is a neat use of the triangle form in an unexpected place–a three-dimensional book! Triangles as 3-D forms are, yes, usually called pyramids but since we are jumping off from the most basic form, this counts, right? Besides it’s too cool not to share as soon as possible.
I found this on the Creative Journey Studios site as a sample of pieces that Dayle Doroshow will be teaching there in November. Here’s the description for the The Unfolding Pyramid class “Personal imagery, found objects and other mixed media will be combined with polymer clay to create a pyramid structure that unfolds to reveal a hidden surprise. Polymer clay techniques will include transferring photocopy imagery, carving and antiquing, making and using three dimensional clay pieces, and weathered surface treatments.” Okay, who isn’t dying to go take this class?
Aside from that wonderful opportunity, this structure is a fantastic example of taking the common form for an object–in this case a rectangle is standard for a book–and replacing it with another form to either make a statement or to push yourself creatively. Not only is the triangle form for a book uncommon but it is really a melding of a box and a book. And with Dayle’s trademark antiquing and use of ancient imagery, this unusual piece is just steeped in a sense of mysticism and mystery.
For this and other Creative Journey Studios Classes, see the Creative Journey website. To see where else you can take classes with Dayle and for more of her work or to purchase her books or DVDs, visit her website and poke around for a bit!
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Boomerang
July 8, 2014
Inspirational Art
The terms we use for various shapes are simple generalizations of a concept–squares are anything with four straight equal side, a circle has a circumference that moves around a center point with equal distance and a triangle is nothing more than a shape with three straight sides. Using that simple definition as a jumping off point, you can push the triangular shapes into variations of the definition. In the case here, Bénédicte Bruttin rounds off all the triangular sides and even has one scoop down to create something closer to an arrow, although, I see boomerangs more than anything. Regardless, the shape is very directive, pointing down in a series with these little points of additional focus in the beads used to hang them, filling in the space scooped out of the standard triangle shape. Altogether, this makes for a rather dynamic set of beads. The subtle crackling on the surface–another series of lines that denote movement–doesn’t do them any harm either.
There has been a lot of Bénédicte’s work making the rounds on Pinterest. It’s a really strong body of work you’ll find on her Flickr page as well, with a fun contemporary look and lots of shape play. Check it out!
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Pushing the Triangle
July 7, 2014
Inspirational Art
This week I thought we’d look at pushing basic forms, triangles in particular. Triangles are the strongest form in nature. The three straight sides meet and push against each other so that the structure doesn’t move. It is also a form based on the number three which represents balance or completeness in many cultures and religions. But a triangle can be much more than three straight sides. How can you move beyond the basic shape and push it to be something more than the static, yet stable form we traditionally think of.
For instance, in this pin by Carol Beal, the usual static feel of a triangle is given a dynamic perk by taking a corner and sweeping it in a gentle curve. The interior shapes also echo this sweep, increasing the sense of movement up and off to the side.
Carol looks to be still exploring polymer and all its possibilities. She has work on her Flickr page and her Etsy shop.
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Dinkel’s Vision
July 5, 2014
Inspirational Art
Georg Dinkel not only names his work aptly but has a whole set of stories, ideas and concepts behind his pieces. He recently sent us the link to this fascinating and fun little video about his piece Tone Shrine for iPod. I know we talked about him back in May but this was too good to not pass on. I have the feeling he had as much fun making this video as he did making the piece.
If you missed checking out his work from other posts here and elsewhere, there is more to see and watch on his website as well.
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Outside Inspiration: Names Pushing Images
July 4, 2014
Inspirational Art
Before I tell you the name of this piece, what would you call it or what does it make you think of? This lovely combination of silver, gold, 22k gold and sterling mokume gane with both precious and semi-precious stones is the work of Joan Tenebaum. Joan is an anthropologist who is heavily influenced by Alaska where she lived for 17 years. Does that help?
So this piece is called High Mountains in Full Moon II. Not that citrine colored moons are all that common, but the inner glow of the stone can be considered in line with the glow of the moon and the mokume looks very much like a mountain range. You can find more of Joan’s work and artwork titles to ponder on her website.
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All Encompassing Names
July 3, 2014
Inspirational Art
If you work with a high volume of finished pieces, even if they are all one of a kind, it can be hard to effectively name all of them so one option is to name the series rather than each individual piece. This floral cane pendant is stunning enough on it’s own but there is a certain added awe when you find out that artist Ivy Niles calls the series of canes she made this from the Mortal Coil series.
Ivy’s collection of available canes are organized by the series name in her Etsy shop. Browse her Mortal Coil and other cane series as well as finished jewelry in those all encompassing pages.
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Names for Everything
July 2, 2014
Inspirational Art
I have to bring up Christine Damm this week since the first time I ever mentioned naming on this blog was in reference to her shop name–“Stories They Tell”. It’s simple, but really effective, and she also names all her pieces to reflect her thoughts on the work. This one is a happy piece called All That Jazz. The name definitely pushes you towards considering the more musical parallels the colors, shapes and lines convey.
So what does your art, your shop, and (if different) your business names tell others? What do other artist’s shop and business names say to you? These are great questions to ask yourself if you are looking to start something new or change things up in where and how you sell your work.
Find out more about Christine’s work as well as checking out more unusual and story conveying names on her Flickr pages and her blog.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Identifying Inspiration
July 1, 2014
Inspirational Art
With a single word, we can convey a tremendous amount of meaning including images, emotions, or entire concepts. Names, whether they are given to a person, a place, an event or an idea will often carry all of this. When Sarah Shriver chose to call not just her pieces, but a color palette after a single person, she brought in the full history and all the concepts associated with what each of us know about a woman named Frida. Her Frida palette echos the brilliance often found in the paintings of the renown Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. This also gives us a little bit of insight as to where Sarah finds her color inspirations.
Frida Bracelet
Naming your work after someone or something widely familiar can bring a tremendous amount of character and depth to your work. I have a ceramicist friend who names all his work after people, places and things seen in famous fantasy movies and books even though there isn’t usually any direct imagery on his work from these movies, just a general sense of it. He usually sells out at all the shows he does. It does help that he is a very skilled ceramic artist, and that he knows who he is selling to. Didn’t think naming your work could do much for your sales? I can tell you from my own experience that it can make all the difference.
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It’s hard to have a week about sculptural wall art in polymer and not bring up Meredith Dittmar. Her work is often very complex with a lot of symbolic imagery, and unlike the work we’ve been looking at so far, it is not comprised of a series of smaller, similar pieces or canes, but uniquely sculptured components. However, if you are looking to see how her techniques relate to your work when you create your jewelry or decor, just look at this piece, which is a relatively abstract example of her wall sculptures. Can you see this as a pendant or the lid to a beautifully rendered box?
It is the composition, the color palette, the shapes and the juxtaposition of them that make the work so vibrant and interesting; all concepts and examples that can be translated to other polymer work. Well, any kind of art at all, really.
Meredith’s work may be even more inspiring to you if you create creatures of any kind. Some of her wall art includes endearing animals, and then she has her “guys”, which are her art toy figurines. Her website which has her main portfolio has a nice overview of her wall art while you can find her “guys” tucked away in a different website dedicated just to them.
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A more traditional approach to wall sculpture, but keeping with the use of smaller parts to complete a larger and whole part, would be something like this fantastical piece by Layl McDill. Her wall sculptures are composed of a wide variety of cane slices, beads and sheets of marbled or surface treated clay.
The entrancing thing about Layl’s work is just how wildly playful it is. This work is not about finish, precision or any particular technique. It’s about the story and a child-like ability to let the imagination roam freely.
This piece entitled “Blingo Flamingo Adventureland” has to be my favorite piece of hers to date. Every part of this piece either reaches out or swings back, and used alongside the high-energy of the colors and cane patterns, creates this frenetically kinetic composition. Such fun!
Layl is the co-owner of Clay Squared to Infinity, a shop for handmade ceramic tile as well as Layl’s polymer sculptures, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Layl also posts her work on Flickr for a full, all-at-once visual dose of her child-like abandon.
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I think a lot of clayers may avoid trying wall art because working on a larger scale may be imposing. But most wall art in polymer is smaller parts put together. We saw that yesterday. Today, we have an even more specific example of it.
This is a collective work of multiple polymer tiles by Dan Friedlander. As you can see, the whole installation is a series of smaller tiles arranged as a larger piece. Although, at about 6″ square, the tiles are larger than most of us work with to create jewelry. However, think of each tile the same way you consider each bead or element you put together when you create a necklace, and you are using the same approach needed in order to construct a wall sculpture like this.
From this perspective, does creating wall art seem imposing at all?
Dan’s work is all about texture and contrast. His pieces involve tiles or components that would ideally work as a collective as they show off the subtle difference in their compiled forms, which is the basis for his textures. It’s rather hard to describe, but it’s much easier to see and experience. Take a quick jaunt over to his website to see what I mean. On his Shows page, take a look at the large porcelain installation “Isotope Breakfast” for a rare look at his integration of color. This is another great example of gathering individual components in order to create wonderful wall art.
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I wanted to look at wall sculpture this week. This is actually where my own exploration has been headed. Wall sculpture can utilize just about every technique we have developed in polymer clay. From surface treatments to inclusions, to painting and even, yes, sculpting of all things! They tend to be rather big and time consuming projects, but they are also highly expressive forms in our medium. Even if you are purely a jewelry or miniature artist in polymer, wall sculpture can be an enormously inspiring source of ideas because what is a pendant or bracelet, but the same thing reduced and arranged to hang on the body rather than a wall?
Can’t you see this piece as a pendant if done in miniature? Well, I could, but I am glad it is wall art. It being just for hanging and contemplating is what really separates wall art from jewelry or decor arts. It has no purpose beyond being created to express and to be viewed.
This intriguing piece was created by Dorothy Siemens. It is titled “Colony” for what is probably an obvious reason, but the base for each inhabitant of this colony may not be so obvious. If you sew, you’ll know right away. The forms and colors look like they might be inspired by sea creatures, but perhaps it really just started with the bobbins and grew from there. Dorothy’s work does often make you stop and wonder where these unusual forms came from. What is it that Dorothy sees around her that inspires such unusual shapes? You can check out more of her polymer sculpture as well as her other work in other mediums on her Flickr pages.
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Alright … one last thought about pushing necklace design. Because we love our polymer so much, many of us may think almost exclusively in terms of polymer elements in our designs. But reaching out and grabbing other mediums can be the very thing you need to push your work in a fantastic new direction.
This necklace by Marlene Brady has the simple, but dramatic addition of felt, which is both a functional element and a contrasting design element. The soft, fuzzy felt gives one of the few textures to this piece that polymer cannot duplicate. The black and the soft edge of the felt contrasts heavily with the white, chiseled beads. Marlene also pushes the design by allowing the felt and heishi beads to fall very long down the front of the wearer. There is no dramatic engineering of the necklace here, but the choices make it unusual, and that gives us a few points to consider towards the stretch of a more traditional design.
Marlene has been exploring the mix of fiber and polymer for a few years. You can see more of her unusual necklace compositions and other ideas on her Flickr page and her blog.
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Okay, this isn’t terribly old, but let this illustrate that pushing the construction of a necklace isn’t a contemporary idea. This piece below was created 60 years ago. Note the openness of the construction and the careful balance of the compositions – things we’ve talked about already this week. They aren’t that new, but they aren’t that common either.
- “Patina” neckpiece 1955
This intriguing piece was created by Art Smith, a Cuban born American. It is all silver with some surface texturing and some careful planning in order to get the balance right. I can easily see something like this in polymer. Who is willing to push a piece to this level of engineering? It is something to consider if you are playing in the studio this weekend. I’ll try to dig up one more idea or challenge for pushing your idea of necklace construction for tomorrow. It will be quite warm in much of the US as well as other places around the world, so why don’t we all just stay in and push ourselves a bit?
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Pushing the construction or composition of a necklace doesn’t have to be overly complex. Simplicity is sometimes the best path to unusual pieces.
With this composition by Russian artist Oksana Aleksandrovna Vedernikova (she works under the name Silverpepper), the rather stark presentation really helps us focus on the delicate details of these of the gorgeously crafted polymer beads. The uneven drop length keeps the composition from feeling stagnant and gives each bead a separate height from which to be admired.
Oksana rarely creates in typical or classical composition. If you enjoy the idea of pushing construction and presentation of your polymer within the art jewelry form, you will find further inspiration within her other creations. Just head on over to her Flickr pages.
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This necklace isn’t so off the beaten path when it comes to composition, but it is a bit different in its construction. The hinge construction is somewhat of a trademark for Louise Fischer Cozzi; although, I have wondered why this kind of simple way of connecting hasn’t been seen more. The metal wire goes through one shape into another in order to form the hinge upon which they are connected. This allows the flat beads to move and rotate while on the wearer. This rotation hides and reveals the surface of the shapes as the wearer moves.
I love the simplicity of this type of construction, but I also think this could be pushed, using that hide and reveal result, to allow unexpected images that come and go. This would create compositions at the point where the surface textures meet up. Yes, this would take a bit of planning, but how fun and intriguing a piece it would be!
To see more of Louise’s hinged jewelry, along with her other beautiful decor and quilts, take a look at her website here.
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Let’s look at the simple idea that necklaces don’t have to be a complete, fully attached, encircling item nor does the closure for it have to be at the back of the neck. If the point at which the necklace opens can be integrated into the design, it can be placed anywhere on the piece. And if you have a firm, but pliable structure, it doesn’t even have to connect.
Olimpia Corvino used this approach with a number of her designs. This necklace breaks the usual standards of using wire as structure. This breakaway from the norm allows for a front entrance and two large pieces of polymer to just barely meet in the middle. That “barely there” touch is fantastic as it causes tension and a point of focus. I really enjoy that she has used wire work to break the swathes of polymer at a point that would have normally been the center had the necklace used a standard wire structure in order to join it. It’s another subtler point of tension, but these near connections do a lot to enliven the design.
For now, Olimpia’s designs seem to exist only on Facebook, but as it is a business page, you can actually access it whether or not you have a Facebook account. Take a look at her wide range of pieces, which are sometimes nontraditional, sometimes standard, but always bold in color, texture or approach.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
